Private schools team up for school safety

Private schools in Palm Beach and Broward counties are banding together and finding ways to strengthen safety in their schools.

Following the school slaying in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and 6 teachers dead, a group of schools teamed up this month to form the Independent School Safety Coalition.

It hopes to bring private schools together to share resources, expertise and create a crisis emergency plan for its schools.

"Sometimes we don't reach out to people right here in our area," said Dana Markham, president of Pine Crest, which has campuses in Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale. "Often people think we're in competition but I really felt we should be there for each other in time of need or crisis."

Markham said she started making calls to nearby private schools after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. So far, six schools have signed up for the coalition.

"We understand that support networks for the public schools are different than [private] schools," she said.

While school-based officers in public schools are paid for by the school district or split between the district and the municipality, private schools pay the costs on their own.

Markham said many private schools do not have their own buses — a benefit the new coalition can provide.

Pine Crest currently has 48 school buses which Markham said they are willing to share if a nearby school needs them to evacuate their classrooms.

Schools could also open up their campuses to neighboring schools in the case of an evacuation.

"It's sharing resources and looking out for community," said Markham.

Rabbi David Spey of Temple Bat Yam in Fort Lauderdale said his school joined the coalition to leverage the expertise of larger schools and form a crisis management plan.

"We want to put something together as a formal idea," said Spey. "To help us figure out what kinds of infrastructure changes are needed."

Spey said private schools also tend to receive delayed information during emergencies.

"We don't have the same access, the same speed of access to the intelligence community about security threats and issues. We're getting our information often secondhand."

He said forming a coalition could ease communication efforts from county entities that already have well-established relationships with public school officials.

For now, the coalition is focused on drafting an emergency plan before looking at other topics such as funding additional school-resource officers, installing metal detectors or adding police aids at schools.

"If we can at least have major steps and processes and know that you have help on the way, that's what we're looking at," Markham said.